Dead Man's Land

by Robert Ryan

  They crossed over a bluff, and now there was a steep slope, leading down to a beech wood. Again he squatted, with no little huffing and puffing, and rubbed something between finger and thumbs. His eyes were taken by a clump of wind-bent bushes just below the ridge to the left. He motioned for the boy to stay back and began to creep towards the shrubs on his toes, the kebbie now held like a staff. Bert couldn’t help but notice a rather worrying gleam in his eyes when he turned and made a shushing gesture with his finger across his lips.

  With a small cry he leaped forward and parted the branches of the small trees, which revealed a small hollow within their embrace. For a second he disappeared as the twigs closed back over him, but a second later he was out again. Sensing the excitement, such as it had been, was over, Bert advanced on the guilty bushes. The Tweedy Man used his staff to move some of the branches, so Bert could see inside.

  Lying in the chalky soil, amid the dark roots, was a prone figure, dressed in what Bert, the invasion expert, knew was a dark blue German naval uniform. On his feet was a pair of fine, laced, leather ankle-boots. On the soles was the reverse of the pattern they had been hunting, with the P the right way round. It was also obvious to Bert that the man was quite dead. His face had been badly burned and there was congealed blood on his clothes. It was his first dead body. He determined to note the date.

  The Tweedy Man explained patiently that the P and the lightning strikes told him that the boots were from the town of Pirmasens, centre of the German shoe trade, and manufactured by a company called Pessen. Then he sent him off to fetch one of the soldiers.

  When he returned, the Tweedy Man ducked out of the hollow, brushed himself down, and told the soldier that this had been the second-in-command of the Zeppelin, that he hailed from Bremen and that his high-quality boots, belt and other leatherwork suggested that he was from a wealthy family, as they were not standard naval issue. Residues and burns on his hands suggested it was he who lit the charge to destroy the stranded craft.

  Injured in the subsequent explosion, and fearing he would slow his friends down in their futile attempts to evade capture, he had walked, dragging one foot behind him, away from the burning dirigible, then had fallen on his hands and knees and crawled several hundred yards, leaving telltale tracks, droplets of blood and flakes of burned skin, to hide in this hollow, where he had expired at sometime shortly after midnight.

  Having made sure the dumbfounded soldier had all that straight in his head, the Tweedy Man thanked Bert, explained how he had known he was a Boy Scout, and left him with his shilling and a very odd sentiment. ‘It seems, young Bert, that man cannot live by bees alone after all.’ And then he strode off, his legs covering the ground with the speed and spring Bert remembered from his first encounter with the strange man.

  THIRTY-SIX

  They were battling in the dark, fighting a spectre with no shape or form, with no idea what it might be vulnerable to. Watson felt as if had been transported back to the Middle Ages, facing up to disease and pestilence armed only with primitive herbal medicines and superstitious spells.

  De Griffon leaned over the bed and vomited noisily into the steel bucket. As he swung back Mrs Gregson wiped his mouth and placed the rubber oxygen mask back on. He was still fitting, but less often. They had purged him, with syrup of ipecac as an emetic and compound powder of glycyrrhiza plus Rochelle salts as laxatives, to try and eliminate whatever toxins were in his body. Guaiacol antipyretic had been administered to bring the temperature down. Although he hadn’t yet turned blue – his pallor, though, was distinctly grey – his pulse was wildly erratic and the fits caused the facial muscles to spasm towards that awful grin.

  Watson was close to his wits’ end.

  ‘I’m going to change his blood,’ he said as the patient lapsed back into quiescence.

  ‘Change it?’ asked Mrs Gregson.

  ‘Total body transfusion.’

  ‘Good Lord. Isn’t that dangerous?’ asked Mrs Gregson.

  Watson didn’t answer. There was only one he could give: yes it is. But so was doing nothing.

  They had managed to get de Griffon back to the CCS by hijacking the lorry that had arrived towing the mobile bathhouse. For one tense moment the Leigh Pals thought he intended to take the entire rig, trailer and all, and there was a hint of mutiny in the air. Watson had let Platt disconnect the bathing machine before Mrs Gregson had commandeered the Dennis and driven it at reckless speed to get back to the transfusion tent.

  Now Watson took a sample of blood from de Griffon’s ear and smeared it onto a porcelain dish. He intended to make a cross-match with his own blood.

  ‘I can’t think of anything else. If it’s a poison, then cleansing the blood should work. Some members of the royal family have it done on a regular basis. For their blood disorder.’

  ‘Over how long a period?’

  Watson smiled at the pertinence of the question. ‘At least twenty-four hours.’

  ‘How long have we got?’

  He shrugged. ‘Less than that I would wager.’

  ‘And isn’t there a shock to the body?’

  ‘In a weakened state there can be acute dilation of the heart when the myocardium is shocked. The more blood we put in, the harder the heart will have to work. So we’ll have to drain him a little as we infuse.’

  Watson waited for an objection, but none came. In truth, he was at the boundary of his knowledge here. Transfusion was a young science, one forged, and forged quickly, in the heat of battle.

  Watson pricked his own finger and put a few drops into a suspension of sodium citrate solution in a test tube, which he held up and shook vigorously.

  ‘You are going to give him your blood?’

  ‘I can spare a couple of pints. Can I take a sample of yours?’

  She held out her finger and he used a lancet to collect some of hers into a citrate solution.

  ‘I’m group II,’ she said. ‘Oh, hold on . . .’

  Mrs Gregson removed the oxygen mask from de Griffon and stepped back as he rolled and vomited again, bringing up a trail of green slime that she wiped away. ‘I think we’ve got his stomach emptied.’

  The captain muttered something unintelligible and slumped back. His forehead still glistened with fever. Mrs Gregson busied herself changing the bedpan arrangement in the window of quiescence. By the time she returned, Watson had finished the agglutination tests. ‘I think we have a universal recipient.’

  Mrs Gregson rolled up her sleeve. ‘In which case . . . And once I’ve done I’ll go and get Miss Pippery.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He began to pull the dressing off his arm. Might as well use the old incision. ‘And thank you for getting the information on Hornby. What made you decide to do that?’

  ‘Didn’t you get my note?’

  His hand automatically went to his trouser pocket and he pulled out the creased envelope that Staff Nurse Jennings had given him. ‘I’m sorry.’ He went to rip it open.

  ‘Don’t bother. It just says I’ll placate Sister Spence by going back to Bailleul. But while I am there I’ll try and access the records of the man I saw with the same symptoms.’

  ‘Did you have difficulty doing that?’

  ‘Not really.’ A fleeting expression suggested otherwise. ‘I might have bent the rules a little. Which means I might have put myself in a bit of difficulty if I ever go back there. There is someone who I am sure now feels there is a score to settle.’

  ‘Mrs Gregson, I wouldn’t have expected—’

  ‘Oh, I haven’t done anything too rash. I haven’t promised my body or anything.’ She said this with an unsettling little grin, as if she had considered it. ‘Just got on the wrong side of someone. I’ll think of a way out of it.’

  The captain groaned and twisted, as if trying to cast the sheets and blanket off. Mrs Gregson laid a cold compress on his forehead and the distress subsided. ‘You’ve checked his body for marks?’

  She nodded. ‘Nothing out of the ordinary. He bites his
nails.’

  ‘As long as it’s not his toenails.’

  They both laughed at the absurdity of the comment.

  ‘And it said nothing about any marks on Hornby’s body?’

  ‘No. But then again, it rather played down the facial spasm and the hands, too.’

  ‘If nobody was looking for the numerals . . .’

  ‘That’s why I stole that piece of paper from the file.’

  Watson didn’t quite follow. ‘You took it to show that he shared a regiment with Shipobottom.’

  ‘Not that one. This one. I ripped out part of a second page. It has the number of Hornby’s burial plot at the Bailleul hospital cemetery.’

  ‘Mrs Gregson, are you suggesting what I think you are suggesting?’

  ‘I should imagine so.’ She kept a steady gaze and an even tone to her voice, as if what she was about to say was the most natural thing in the world. ‘We’re going to have to dig up Private Edward Hornby.’

  Metcalf was pacing the ground outside the transfusion tent when Staff Nurse Jennings found him. He had no trench coat on and the drizzle had soaked the upper part of his tunic.

  ‘Lieutenant, you’ll be wearing a hole in the ground. And if you carry on getting wet like that, we’ll be putting you in it. Are you waiting to see the captain?’

  He waved an arm at the transfusion tent.

  ‘Yes, but Major Watson sent me away with a flea in my ear,’ the young man said petulantly. ‘Asked me to write down my movements for the past two days. Which I suspect is a ruse to get me out of his hair.’

  ‘Do you know who Major Watson is?’

  Metcalf shook his head. ‘No. Should I?’

  ‘Possibly not. But trust me, he knows what he is doing. Come with me.’ She grabbed his elbow and steered him back up towards the Big House. On the way she passed Sister Spence, who eyed her suspiciously. ‘Staff Nurse Jennings.’

  She inclined her head at Metcalf. ‘Shock, Sister. Sweet tea.’

  ‘Of course. You don’t have to stay and watch him drink it, mind.’

  ‘No, Sister. I am on surgical in fifteen.’

  ‘Fine. There is some mail for you. Nurse Cummins has it at the office.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  She steered him towards the refreshment station, an open-sided tent staffed by orderlies who kept two large urns of stewed tea – far too strong for her liking – on the go day and night. She sat Metcalf down and fetched him a mug with three sugars.

  ‘I’ve only got a few minutes,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t fibbing to Sister Spence.’

  He took a sip of the tea. ‘Thank you. You’re very kind.’

  ‘The captain is in good hands.’ She gave an outline of Watson’s past, as far as she knew it. ‘So you see, Major Watson is a very capable man.’

  This seemed to cut little ice with Metcalf. The Afghan War was a long time ago and he had little time for detective stories. ‘He’ll need to be. Anything happens to Captain de Griffon, I would imagine there would be hell to pay.’

  ‘Oh? Why is that?’

  ‘Well, he’s recently . . .’ Metcalf hesitated, wondering if he was speaking out of turn, ‘. . . recently discovered he is the new Lord Stanwood.’

  ‘And that makes a difference, does it?’ Jennings asked.

  ‘I should say so. The family will want to know what happened here.’

  ‘I think we would like to know, too. There was a time, Lieutenant Metcalf, when having a Lord Stanwood here would have made us all agog. Most of us had never seen an earl or a duke or even a sir.’ She shook her head. ‘But when you’ve seen the Earl of Croftford with his insides on display or Sir William Tennant contemplating life without knees, or anything below them, you soon lose any notion that they are somehow different.’ She gave a sigh. ‘Goodness, listen to me, I sound like Mrs Gregson.’

  ‘What does Mrs Gregson sound like?’ he asked, although, having had a taste of her conversation, he felt he had a good idea.

  ‘Well, she has – had – rather strong views on those things. On inherited privilege and such matters.’ Strong enough to support anarchy and murder at one time, she recalled. Or only at one time? It was probably worth mentioning to Dr Watson what she knew of his VAD’s past. Although could that be misconstrued as spreading malicious gossip? Mrs Gregson’s chequered history might have nothing at all to do with current events. She would ponder on it. She had mail to collect, patients to care for, and there was always a chance he might think her meddlesome. Or just another nurse with an axe to grind against VADs.

  ‘You should do what Major Watson says. Write everything down, from getting out of bed yesterday to seeing the captain taken ill.’

  ‘But why? What good will that do?’

  ‘You were here yesterday, correct?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. I was with Mrs Gregson and Miss Pippery. And visiting the men, of course.’

  ‘Of course. But you saw Shipobottom?’

  ‘I did. I visited him first thing, and again before I left when he was being taken for his transfusion.’

  ‘And then, today, you were with Captain de Griffon when he began to show the same symptoms.’

  He slammed his tea down, slopping some onto the table. ‘Look here, what are you driving at?’

  Just what Major Watson will be, she thought. She stood. ‘Nothing at all. But if I were you, Lieutenant, I’d get writing. You seem to have acquired the habit of being in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Watson awoke with a start, his mind struggling to make sense of where he was or what time it was. He was lying, still fully clothed, on one of the cot-beds. In the lamplight he could see Mrs Gregson on one of the others, sitting upright, with Miss Pippery curled next to her, eyes tight shut. The older woman was stroking the young VAD’s hair, slowly and tenderly. She smiled when she saw Watson was awake.

  He helped himself to some water and looked at his watch. It was almost midnight. The last he remembered was a visit from Torrance and more cross words with the major. Then, another infusion of blood and feeling light-headed. Staff Nurse Jennings had come, he recalled, although he couldn’t say whether she volunteered blood or not. The tent swam a little with the effort of remembering. ‘I’m sorry—’ he began.

  Mrs Gregson shook her head. ‘I’d have woken you if anything happened. You looked all done.’

  He moved stiffly, feeling his age, over across to where de Griffon lay. He no longer had the oxygen mask on, his face looked serene, his breathing was steady. Watson gingerly checked the pulse. It was nicely robust.

  ‘I think you saved him,’ said Mrs Gregson.

  ‘I think we saved him. I’ll need to question him about how this started, once he is strong enough. And I should get his sample to a laboratory.’ Watson had saved some of the blood extracted from de Griffon for analysis.

  ‘All that can wait. You look dreadful. You gave too much blood.’

  It was probably true. He was certainly fatigued and the room felt as if he were on some ocean liner, rolling gently in a swell. ‘You did the same.’

  She threw him a look that, without any need for vocalizing, told him she was younger and fitter than he. ‘I’ll wake up Alice – Miss Pippery – in a while or so and I’ll get some sleep myself. But you go back to your room, now. That’s a VAD order. The other thing can wait.’

  ‘The other thing?’ he asked groggily.

  She mimed digging with a shovel.

  He shook his head. ‘Mrs Gregson, I am many things, but I’m not a grave robber. We’ll have to go through proper channels.’

  She raised an eyebrow to show what she thought of those. ‘Go to bed. Now. Shoo.’

  Too weary to argue, he thanked her, picked up his tunic and walked out into the dank night.

  Well done, Watson, said the imposter in his head.

  Yet, even knowing it was fraudulent, the return of the voice gave him some comfort. As he took one leaden step after another up the hill, his collar turned up to th
e wind, he wondered how his life might have turned out without that fateful meeting in the chemical laboratory of St Bart’s. It was one of those forks in the road that litter everybody’s life. That one had hinged on a chance conversation with Stamford, his former dresser from Bart’s, at the Criterion Bar. What would he have become if their paths had never crossed and Stamford hadn’t engineered a meeting with a man who had ‘a passion for definite and exact knowledge’? And if that man hadn’t already secured lodgings in Baker Street?

  He would have become a quotidian GP, he supposed, like one of those he had bought his several practices from over the years, fingers stained with silver nitrate from burning warts, iodine from treating cuts and burns and nicotine from the endless cigarettes a long surgery demanded, his shoulders hunched from too many bedside visits, the hours spent peering over dying men and expectant mothers.

  No, he’d take the way the world had turned out for him over the past few decades. Even if the final act wasn’t the one he had been anticipating. But then, he thought as he heard the low, pitiful moans of a delirious soldier issue from one of the tents, who could have anticipated all this?

  In answer, there came only the low grumble of assault guns from the south.

  THURSDAY

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The rejuvenating power of sleep once more worked its wonder, dragging Watson back from what had been a yawning abyss of despair when he had laid his head on the pillow. His mood was lifted further by the discovery of a pair of thick socks at the foot of his bed. They had been hand-knitted. He remembered what Churchill had said. The way to win a soldier’s heart and mind was through clean socks.

  He was already up and dressed when Brindle arrived with tea and he was again busy writing down his own account of what had happened over the last forty-eight hours. Watson hoped that putting things down in logical order might present some sort of solution, but no new insight was granted him. The link, if it was a link, suggested that all the victims had come from the same regiment, indeed the same company, although this Hornby was from a different platoon.